Green Party National Convention to Offer ‘Plan B’ for Disaffected Dems

NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images4 Aug 2016

HOUSTON, Texas — Green Party candidates and delegates are arriving in Texas for their 2016 Presidential Nominating Convention with the theme – “Houston, We Have A Solution: Vote Green 2016.” Both the Green Party and their presumptive presidential nominee Jill Stein, are appealing to angry Bernie Sanders supporters, and “Never Hillary” voters, to vote Green as their “Plan B.”

Doors open early Thursday and candidates, delegates, media, and guests will converge at the Student Center at the University of Houston near downtown. The national convention for the Green Party of the United States (“GPUS”) will meet at that location through Saturday, August 6th.

As reported by Breitbart News, Stein tweeted on Monday that she was honored to announce “human rights champion” Ajamu Baraka as her VP pick. Stein called Baraka an “activist, writer, intellectual and organizer with a powerful voice, vision, and lifelong commitment to building true political revolution.”

Stein said she appreciated noted Bernie Sanders’ supporter Senator Nina Turner’s (D-OH) “willingness” to discuss the VP position with her but explained, “The fit just wasn’t right, as Senator Turner is still committed to try to save the soul of the Democratic Party.”

Dr. Stein says on her website, “Our campaign is fully committed to the fight for a political revolution in a party with a demonstrated, unwavering commitment to that political revolution. We welcome the 60% of Americans who want a principled alternative to the Democrats and Republicans. We are also happy to continue serving as a ‘plan B’ safety net for discouraged reformers as they tire of the disempowering, uphill battle inside the Democratic Party that was so painfully on display at the Democratic National Convention.”

Stein reached out to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) supporters at the Democratic National Convention and her Party and her candidacy as a “plan B,” as reported by Breitbart News. In an interview with NPR, Stein said they were at the Democratic convention “especially for the Bernie Sanders movement that does not want to go back into that dark night, into the Hillary Clinton campaign, that for so many people represents the opposite of what Bernie was building and what they were building.” Stein said she feels “most horrible about a voting system that says: Here are two deadly choices, now pick your weapon of self-destruction.”

Leaked Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails have recently revealed that the DNC conspired with Hillary Clinton to defeat Sanders in the Democratic presidential primary, as reported by Breitbart News. This revelation angered the Sanders camp and its supporters who even prior to this revelation, were not going to vote for Hillary.

On June 22, Breitbart News reported that a June Bloomberg poll found that almost half of those who supported Sanders in the Democratic primary race do not support Hillary Clinton. Nearly a quarter of those polled at that time said they were going to vote for then-presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump. Many of those polled called Clinton just “another establishment politician” and a “corporate politician.”

Dr. Stein drew huge crowds at the DNC convention and many Sanders supporters, as reported by Breitbart News in video interviews, said they were going to vote green.

According to the gpus.org website, William “Bill” Kreml is the other “recognized candidate.” He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of South Carolina. His answers to the GPUS questionnaire can be found at this link.

Kreml is a Taoist and says, “It is long overdue time for our government to resist the war footing that has been imposed on us by the Military/Industrial/Religion Complex.” He also champions equal pay for women, and says “There is no question that America’s most precious civil liberties have been eroded by legislation such as the Patriot Act, NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act), and other nefarious authorizations of internal spying.” He urges, “The intelligence community must be reined in.”

Kreml says, “The growing inequality of Americans, the result of everything from rich-favoring tax law changes, union busting, the shipping of jobs overseas, and the unwillingness of the federal government to sponsor adequate job training programs that keep our workers current with ever more complex technologies, are only the most significant of the causes of our growing inequality.”

Delegates from the Green Parties from states across the U.S. will have the opportunity to vote and determine who will become the GPUS presidential nominee. Fourteen candidates are listed as seeking the 2016 Green Party presidential nomination; only twelve candidates have filled with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) according to the GPUS website.

Green Party presidential candidate Sedinam Kinamo Christin Moyowasifza-Curry said in her answer on the GPUS questionnaire, “You’ve been had by Corporate Democrats who have much more in common with Neo conservative Republicans than progressive populists like Bernie Sanders. Or yourselves, for that matter.” She adds, “Voting for establishment Democrats who have the same basic interests as the GOP is equally insane.”

The Green Party says that their platform and Bernie Sander’s platform have “strong points of agreement, especially on domestic issues (e.g., the need for a single-payer health care system, living wages, restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act), enough for many Greens to feel a sense of solidarity with Bernie and his supporters. There are also sharp differences on foreign policy and military spending.” They distinguish themselves from Sanders’ platform by saying the GPUS “advocate more extensive action on climate change and reorganizing the economy to benefit middle-and low-income working people and the poor.”

Real Financial Reform (“It’s time to take Wall Street out of the driver’s seat and to free the truly productive segments of working America to make this economy work for all of us.”);

A Functioning Democracy (This includes supporting Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s proposed “Right to Vote Amendment,” revoking “corporate personhood by amending our Constitution to make clear that corporations are not persons and money is not speech,” and expanding federal support for locally-owned broadcast and print media. They also want to reduce military spending by 50 percent and close U.S. military bases around the world, as well as repeal the Patriot Act and parts of the National Defense Authorization Act “that violate our civil liberties.”)

“The Green New Deal” program plan ends with the statement: “Let us not rest until we have pulled our nation back from the brink, and until we have secured the peaceful, just, green future we all deserve.”

Lana Shadwick is a contributing writer and legal analyst for Breitbart Texas. She has served as a prosecutor and associate judge in Texas. Follow her on Twitter @LanaShadwick2.